Self-flagellation has become the fashion in broadcasting. Less than a month after the extraordinary Newsnight programme in which the whole show was devoted to apologising for the false Lord McAlpine report and questioning the programme's very right to exist, an American actor went even further – suggesting that the hit sitcom in which he appears may be the work of the devil.

As well as further confirming the difficulties of talent management in an age of social media, Angus T Jones's attack on Two and a Half Men as irreligious filth – for which he has since apologised – has attracted such attention because it breaks a law of product loyalty implicit in the industry and sometimes contractually stipulated.

Broadcasting encourages a form of patriotism, in which staff are expected to wave a flag for their programme. It is a tendency that has worsened since the rise of interactive media because presenters, actors and broadcaster websites can now wave messages from the audience about what a "great show" it is. As a result, it is highly surprising when someone shoots out the tyres on their own vehicle.

Jones's actions place him, however, among distinguished company from the history of TV comedy. In the early decades of the medium in Britain, there was a frequent phenomenon of performers who regarded themselves as distinguished stage actors reluctantly coming in to a medium that offered higher pay but – for them – lower status.

Arthur Lowe, who played Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army, reputedly stowed his script behind the radiator of the rehearsal room every night because he refused to have such inferior material in his house. John Le Mesurier, who played Sergeant Wilson, used to seek out fellow actors and friends during the shooting of the first series and advise them of the terrible disaster on which the cast was embarked.

Because the actors didn't have access to Twitter or Facebook, these acts of sabotage remained unknown until the histories and biographies decades later – but Jones can be consoled that he is not the first performer to have doubts about the scripts that were making him rich. A well-known actor once told me that he and another distinguished theatrical talent were sternly ticked-off by the director on the set of a long-running crime drama for "subverting" the script with a satirical delivery of the lines.

Such rebellions, however, should generally not be apparent in the transmitted version. Examples of on-air subversion – a phenomenon for ever associated with Peter Finch as the cracked-up anchorman in the movie Network – are therefore very rare and startling. No actual newsreader has ever gone as far as the "I'm mad as hell" rant that screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky gave to his character, mainly for the reason that real-life TV is tightly controlled and on-air breakdowns would rapidly be followed by a fade to black and the unexpected scheduling of a cartoon. It's in radio, where slots are often longer and less scripted, and lines of production looser, that the Network-moments have occurred: with presenters from Dave Lee Travis to Danny Baker delivering extravagant valedictory attacks on the management.

During his departing monologue on BBC London, however, Baker was careful to praise the programme itself – "the best show on radio" – and it is exceptionally unusual for a host to attack their own programme. Chris Evans, during what he subsequently admitted in his memoirs to be a period of poor judgment, once interrupted an edition of Channel 4's TFI Friday to berate his producers for the pressure they were putting him under, showing the audience the medication he was apparently taking.

But, perhaps surprisingly, it's the BBC1 gameshow Blankety-Blank, which ran in various versions between 1979 and 2002 on BBC1 and ITV, that takes the prize as the most consistently self-destructive TV show. First Terry Wogan – and then his successors Les Dawson and Lily Savage/Paul O'Grady – ruthlessly sent up the poverty of the format and prizes, rolling their eyes to camera at moments of particular tackiness. This approach was refreshing, precisely because most other shows take themselves so seriously.

Wogan has career-long form in this regard. His commentaries on the Eurovision Song Contest stand as a remarkable example of a TV format being forced to tolerate an enemy within, constantly undermining the premise of the event. As the presenter has admitted in interviews and memoirs, Eurovision were exasperated by his irreverence, but the BBC sensibly understood the benefit of the editorial distance he brought and which Graham Norton has continued.

Although, admittedly, it's unclear that even Wogan could have got away with doing an Angus T Jones and declaring that Eurovision or the Blankety-Blank chequebook and pen were instruments of Satan.